What term describes the genetic makeup of an individual in terms of specific alleles?

• A. Genome
• B. Allele
• C. Genotype
• D. Phenotype

Answer: (C)

The main idea here is the specific combination of alleles an individual carries for particular genes. That combination is the genotype. It describes the allelic constitution for genes, such as having two copies of a gene that can be the same (homozygous) or different (heterozygous). For example, a gene with alleles A and a could result in genotypes AA, Aa, or aa, depending on which alleles are present. This is distinct from phenotype, which is what we can observe (like eye color), and from the genome, which is the entire set of genetic material. An allele is a single variant form of a gene, not the full picture across genes. So the term that best describes the genetic makeup in terms of specific alleles is genotype.